City of Sydney settles long-running legal battle with Moses Obeid over street poles

Michaela Whitbourn

The City of Sydney has settled a long and costly legal battle with Moses Obeid over street poles, admitting it would be more expensive to fight on than to walk away.

Mr Obeid, the middle son of corrupt former Labor minister Eddie, was ordered by the Supreme Court in 2012 to pay $12 million in damages after it found his company Streetscape Projects had breached a licence agreement with the council to use the intellectual property in multi-function streetpoles known as "smartpoles".

But the council has been fighting for years to extract the damages from Mr Obeid.

"The City agreed to settle the case rather than continue incurring further legal costs, as it is clear from Mr Obeid’s conduct to date that Streetscape and Mr Obeid will continue to use legal action to avoid making payment to the City," a spokesman for the City of Sydney said.

"As part of the settlement, Streetscape’s sole director Moses Obeid has acknowledged that the City owns the Smartpole designs and has agreed to return the designs and other intellectual property that belongs to the City and has also agreed not to use the designs to manufacture, sell or derive any financial benefit directly or indirectly from Smartpoles in Australia or overseas."

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Streetscape was placed into liquidation last year "but the liquidator appointed by the Court has been unable to identify assets out of which the judgment could be paid", the council said.

Mr Obeid told the Daily Telegraph that the dispute was settled shortly after his lawyers wrote to the council “about certain inadequacies in their case".

But the council said the settlement of the case "vindicates the City of Sydney’s defence of its intellectual property and ratepayers’ rights over the design and manufacture of its Smartpoles".

Documents filed in the court dispute revealed the family ran its businesses through a complex web of trusts.

"As well as demonstrating that the City will not let the community’s assets be misused or stolen, the litigation’s disclosures about the ownership of the cafes and lease helped to uncover serious corruption and as such served another important public purpose," the council said.

In March 2012, Supreme Court Justice Clifford Einstein ruled that Mr Obeid and Streetscape had deliberately gone behind the council's back to sell more than 10,000 multi-function street poles, known as "smartpoles", to overseas customers without paying royalties.